@beefbot @TheTechnician27 Firetrucks are inanimate objects. Humans make decisions about how to design, deploy, market, and accommodate them. A local fire chief just parroting industry dogma may be less responsible than someone with more power who chose not to sell reasonably sized fire trucks for suburbs and small towns in the US, but the trucks aren’t buying themselves or testifying against safe street designs at the planning board.

@SqueakyBeaver @ji17br Funny how such items enter chats a lot more frequently than they enter the bed of the typical suburban driver’s pickup truck.

@PapaStevesy IMO active voice includes focusing the sentence on the subject that did the action, not the one that was acted upon but by all means let’s argue about grammatical definitions instead of the problem of motorists killing people and journalists normalizing it. 🙄

@MacGuffin94 @ByteOnBikes Drivers can be unfit &/or negligent at any age. The focus should be on a safe system: streets that naturally limit speed so that crashes that do happen are less severe, vehicles that are appropriately sized and simple to operate, required features like automatic braking and speed limiters, and attractive options like walkable destinations and efficient transit.

@apfelwoiSchoppen But functionally, the victim didn’t die on her own, she died as the direct result of the driver hitting her. For the purpose of accurately portraying who took an action and who was acted upon, it should emphasize the driving, not the dying.

@apfelwoiSchoppen @ByteOnBikes Active voice would be, “A driver killed…”

@fruitycoder @Leviathan Not as harrowing as being stuck in a traffic jam with reckless monster truck drivers trying to weave through the traffic at high speed while livestreaming on Facebook.

@Leviathan @DrunkEngineer The American political class lives primarily in car-oriented suburbs and those who live in cities are so rich they can afford to use a car even where it’s woefully inefficient. Our urban policy is run by suburbanites who white flighted out of the cities last century through various state, federal, and local mechanisms (like MPOs) and even city politicians live in fear of the mythical stroad-loving suburban swing voter.

@Kaboom @Max_P Do you really think that car-centric two hour cities in which a typical grocery shopping trip involves sitting in a traffic jam aren’t already enshittified?

@Humanius @praise_idleness That and shared car ownership is an important part of the picture. When everybody owns a private car, everyone has taken on the sunk costs of ownership and feels an urge to drive more to justify it, plus cars dominate the landscape. Having to walk a few blocks to pick up a Zipcar and then pay a rate that to some degree reflects the cost of the trip significantly reduce discretionary driving by those who can walk/bike/use transit.

@FireRetardant @Zoot In fact, narrowing roads and reducing speeding makes it easier for seniors to keep driving as their vision and reaction time decline. Older drivers tend not to feel very comfortable driving on 5 or 6 lane wide stroads.

@FatLegTed @DrCake When I went to driver’s ed, the instructors repeatedly reminded us that we had to be prepared to stop at any time because the driver in front of us could brake for a squirrel or encounter debris in the road or stop for any reason. Most drivers don’t seem to understand the basic physics that stopping distance increases with speed. A key feature of driver assistance systems should be speed-based tailgating prevention.